Weekly Buyer's Guide: Overclocking System - April 2004
by Evan Lieb on April 8, 2004 10:47 AM EST- Posted in
- Guides
Keyboard and Mouse
While trivial, it's still important that you purchase the right keyboard and mouse. Different people have different preferences for a keyboard's feel and look, and the same goes for a mouse. Therefore, we suggest that you personally try out a keyboard and mouse for yourself. Recommending purchasing these items online is misleading, as there are too many users with different preferences for this type of thing. Visit your nearest PC outlet to try out a keyboard and mouse yourself; a PC Club, Best Buy, CompUSA, or Circuit City store will do. We suggest that you start with Microsoft and Logitech keyboards and mice. Make sure you also check out optical mice from Microsoft and Logitech as well. A good solid optical mouse from either manufacturer should run about $20, but in some cases, can run as little as $10 if you can find the right deal.There are also some great wireless optical mice out there, like the MX700 for example, but it really depends on whether you care at all about a wireless mouse and are willing to spend the money to acquire it. Most will be satisfied with a standard optical mouse from Microsoft or Logitech for gaming, as it offers identical (or better) precision and feel than most wireless mice. We are bringing up the idea of wireless mice merely because it is hugely popular with gamers nowadays. Otherwise, stick with what makes you comfortable.
Cooling
Recommendation: Thermalright SLK-947U Copper HeatsinkPrice: $42 shipped
Thermalright is extremely popular with overclockers and enthusiasts in general for their high end HSFs (Heatsink and Fans). The SLK-947U is one of the best HSFs on the market for either Athlon XP or Pentium 4 systems. Its copper construction and soldered fin design are features that allow it to cool very high core clock speeds effectively. Remember, the whole point of getting a high end HSF is so that you can dissipate as much heat as possible from your CPU; otherwise, you end up overheating/damaging your CPU.
Anyway, we took some readings from our SLK-947U with an Athlon XP at 2.52GHz (1.80V) and a Pentium 4 at 3.59GHz (1.65V). Under load, the Athlon XP routinely hit around 52C, while the Pentium 4 hit around 48C. Granted, the ABIT NF7-S Rev.2 routinely outputs high readings (as do most ABIT boards), so under load, the Athlon XP was probably a little cooler than 52C. Still, these temperatures are just fine. Make sure you monitor your ambient temperatures closely and consistently as well. Usually, you need to worry when you start going over 60C, especially if your Athlon XP is running at 1.80V and your Pentium 4 is running at 1.65V. If you want your Pentium 4 and Athlon XP to run at a slightly more conservative overclock like 3.4GHz and 2.4GHz, respectively, your best bet is to turn down your voltage (0.05V-0.10V of your CPU), which will in turn lower your core clock speed overclock to around those 3.4GHz and 2.4GHz levels. Though, with this HSF, you should routinely be reaching no worse than 55C MAX, and most of the time well under 50C.
You also have the option of purchasing Artic Silver 5, a thermal compound that essentially makes your SLK-947U dissipate heat more effectively. It's not 100% necessary, but is useful for slightly better temperatures.
Alternative: Thermalright SP-97 Copper Heatsink with Heatpipe Technology
Price: $54 shipped
The SP-97 is widely considered the best HSF on the market, and pretty much the best cooling that you can buy, short of taking the plunge into water cooling. The SP-97 is, more or less, identical to the SLK-947U, save for the addition of 3 heatpipes for better heat dissipation. Unfortunately, we couldn't get an SP-97 in time for this guide, but it's supposed to make about a 4-5C difference. You'll need a fan for both the SLK-947U and SP-97, so make sure you go out and buy one, preferably a 92mm fan. We suggest the Vantec Tornado, which costs just $13 shipped. At these high clock speeds, you're not going to experience a low noise environment with your fan - it'll need to run over 3000RPM. However, as we said before, if you want to be a little more conservative with your overclock for the sake of noise, you can lower your Vcore, which lowers your clock speed, to around 1.75-1.80V for your Athlon XP and 1.60V-1.65V for your Pentium 4. This allows you to lower your fan's RPM to more reasonable levels while still maintaining a great overclock at low temperatures.
If you cannot find the lowest prices on the products that we've recommended on this page, it's because we don't list some of them in our RealTime pricing engine. Until we do, we suggest that you do an independent search online at the various vendors' web sites. Just pick and choose where you want to buy your products by looking for a vendor located under the "Vendor" heading.
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Jeff7181 - Sunday, April 11, 2004 - link
Oh, and DannyOcean... you say the mobile Athlon XP's only have a 266 Mhz FSB. So what? Mine's running on a 432 Mhz FSB right now... just cause at stock speed they run at 266 Mhz doesn't mean you HAVE to run that at that speed.Jeff7181 - Sunday, April 11, 2004 - link
Muzzy... no, you're not missing something, newegg is... they're wrong if they have it listed at 1.83 Ghz... it's not, it's 133x14 which is 1862 Mhz.DannyOcean - Sunday, April 11, 2004 - link
timebecomes,The mobile Athlon XP's only have a 266 FSB, what's the point?
Evan Lieb,
A Northwood P4C certainly does run faster clock-for-clock, but I would argue that you will not find 2.4C-2.8C P4's (which all clock quite similar) clocking higher on average then a 2.4A Prescott. The 3.0C-3.4C P4's are a differant story, though, and they do clock quite high. They also cost more then $75 over a 2.4A.
timebecomes - Saturday, April 10, 2004 - link
I was just saying that it may drop the price of the existing cards out there such as the 9800 pro that was rated as an alternative at about $200.Evan Lieb - Saturday, April 10, 2004 - link
TrogdorJW,Yeah, I think we'll include an "Alternative" chart next time. As far as your other comments go, I agree to a point that we should include benchmarks. However, this is a still a "guide" and not so much a "review". Certain guides demand testing (mostly just the overclocking ones). Still, we'll give this more consideration. :)
DannyOcean,
The 2.8C is a better overclocking processor and isn't that much more. The 2.4A is slower per clock and draws considerably more power at high overclocks. Plus, the 2.8C actually overclocks better.
timebecomes,
Yes, but you can always say there is something around the corner. Plus, with video cards, sometimes you just never know with a new core how good initial driver support will be, among other early issues that arise with new products.
timebecomes - Saturday, April 10, 2004 - link
May want to also hold off on the vid card if Nvidia and ATI are expected to release new cards in a week or two. It may dump the price of the 9800 pro enough to make it worth it.timebecomes - Saturday, April 10, 2004 - link
Yea... but it only has a 533 FSB...DannyOcean - Friday, April 9, 2004 - link
AnandTech should consider placing the Intel 2.4A (533 FSB) Prescott w/ 1MB L2 Cache CPU as an Intel alternative to the Mobile Athlons. The 2.4A (not to be confused with the earlier 2.4A that had a 400MHz FSB) has shown excellant overclocking headroom for a $150 Intel CPU. With decent air or water cooling it's capable of reaching 800 FSB (200MHz x 18 for a 3.6GHz overal speed). It's costs less then a 2.4C and offers a high multiplier that allows users to use low-latency DDR400 without needing a 5:4 or 3:2 ratio.TrogdorJW - Friday, April 9, 2004 - link
#11 - and also to Evan and the rest of the AT crew....What we really need are the *benchmarks* from these systems. What many people fail to understand is that an Athlon XP at 2.5 GHz is much faster than the Athlon XP 3200+. I would wager that the overall performance of the AXP 2.5 GHz is going to be the same if not better than the A64 3000+ (2.0 GHz and 512K cache). In fact, the 1 MB of cache on the A64 3200+ really only helps a few applications, so AXP 2.5 GHz could very likely equal that as well.
So when are we going to get a set of benchmarks for all of the systems that are being recommended in the Buyers' Guides? I'm thinking that a five week cycle would be nice, unless you can just put the benchmarks into a chart for all the systems. Ideally, what you would have would be one set of pages that would automatically update with all the latest results from each of the systems. That would be pretty slick. Put a link to that in each guide, and we could just go check out the results for the current "recommended configurations". I for one am very curious to see how the OC system compares to the high-end system!
And if it's not too much to ask, how about the total cost of the "Alternative" configurations? The "Alternative" is almost always higher performance, I think, so just have two tables at the end of the articles, one with the recommended setup, and one with the alternative. (And include the alternative setups in the benchmarks, if those are ever done.)
Wow, I'm such a demanding twit. Sorry. Great job on these guides, though!
pgx - Thursday, April 8, 2004 - link
i don't understand the why anyone would want to oc currently to save money unless i'm missing something. a 3000+ amd 64 is only just a bit more($90) but it is guaranteed to work. the savings in ocing just doesn't seem to be very good when compared to the added risk. instead of the system listed you could get an amd 64 3000+ w/ 1GB 3200 ram, and basically similar quality components for practically the same price. you could even oc it a little for even more performance.